In power plants utilising steam, whether they be nuclear power plants, fossil fuel power plants, geothermal power plants or alternate energy power plants such as solar power plants it may be advantageous to continually measure wetness of various steam flows to enable control of steam quality thus improve process efficiency and possibly avoid, or at least minimise, component erosion.
There are a number of known techniques capable of measuring steam wetness, including tracer injection, sound measurement and Electrical Capacitance Tomography. While tracers can provide accurate measurement of wetness concentrations below 1 wt %, tracer technology does not provide continuous measurement required for control. In contrast, while measurement method based solely on Electrical Capacitance Tomography may provide continuous measurement, the method typically has limited accuracy at low wetness concentrations. The same deficiency is typically found with sound based measurement systems.
There is therefore an ongoing need to develop measurement systems that provide accurate continuous wetness measurements for steam flow streams comprising low wetness concentrations